Russians Deny Sex-in-Space Stories. Again.

The news apparently comes in response to the blogosphere recirculating a seven-year-old story from the British Guardian newspaper, in which "respected French scientific writer" Pierre Kohler contended that both U.S. and Russian astronauts had engaged in "cosmic coupling."

That was for scientific purposes only, of course. Testing to see how sexual relations might hold up under the weightless conditions on the International Space Station. And elsewhere. Experiments. Science.

It would be a great story too. If it were true.

From Interfax:

"I've never heard of any sex in orbit. No experiments like this have ever been ventured in this country and no episodes have been reported suggesting that any members of space crews had sex during their missions," Valery Bogomolov, the deputy head of the Biomedical Problems Institute, told Interfax-AVN while commenting on a report published by The Guardian...

"Russian space medicine has not raised this problem so far.Cosmonauts are of course humans but this has not been an issue throughout the history of space flights," he said.

For the record, this was roundly denied by NASA, even branded a hoax, last time the issue popped up. But like all good urban legends, it'll probably never die.